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To a greater extent than the preceding chapters, this one deals with
journalism and politics as arenas and examines how the two of them interact
today. Through analysis of qualitative interviews with Swedish high-profile
journalists, it paints a complex picture of the relationships of reporters
to the emotions that the exercise of their profession may evoke. Special
attention is given to journalistic culture – the normative cement that
creates coherence and meaning in the everyday lives of journalists, where
spoken or silent agreements, rules, and routines govern journalistic work
and the production of news. Many journalists are aware of being caught up in
behaviour based on group pressure and a common driving force, rather than on
individual reflection and critical consideration, when a scandal is in the
offing.

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The introduction provides a detailed survey of existing research in the
media-scandal domain. The author’s own perspectives are introduced, with an
emphasis on ethnological and phenomenological theories which demonstrate the
importance of understanding the scandal as a cultural phenomenon. The
purpose is partly to explore the emotional experience of being the main
figure of a media scandal, partly to study the complex media system that
creates the scandal. What does the scandal feel like for the person who is
affected by it, and what can these emotions teach us about both people and
media? This book brings out more or less forgotten universal human
existential aspects of media scandals, among other things by paying
attention to the emotions of the affected parties.

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This part of the book presents fundamental themes in the interviews with the
central figures of the scandals and their partners. Several respondents
testified to how their previously ‘given’ existence was transformed into an
unfamiliar and terrifying chaos where nothing was the same. Every one of the
affected people testified individually to tangible feelings of unreality and
loneliness in the wake of the media scandal, a loneliness that was both
voluntarily chosen and forced on them. Many of them dwelt on the experience
of being stared at. Some people with a superficial or non-existent
relationship to the protagonist of the drama seemed to respond to the
scandal by staring intently at the scandalised person from a distance.
Others demonstratively averted their eyes. It is a function on the part of
the scandal, the author argues, that it causes guilt and shame in the
affected individual as well as a feeling of being deprived of dignity in the
full glare of publicity. Scandals are shame- and degradation-rituals,
symbolic occasions where people are exiled into the guild of the guilty.

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In this part of the book, the analysis of the relationship between the
interpersonal and the mediated dimension of the public scandal is taken a
step further. The chapter shows that these dimensions are more or less
interwoven, a circumstance to which media researchers have not paid much
attention because they have usually chosen to focus on the media themselves,
employing a narrow definition of the ‘media’ concept. The overall question
is: How is a media scandal possible, and through which media is it created?
On close examination, it becomes clear that scandals have been mediated for
centuries, and that general person-to-person conversations about them have
played a notable part in that process. In a historical perspective, the oral
distribution of news should in point of fact be considered a form of
mediation.

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This chapter is different from the others. This is partly because the main
figure in the case that is described in detail is an anonymous private
individual, partly because the story can be included in the concept of
public shaming, with some folkloristic elements, rather than in that of a
media scandal, although the two are related. The material is suitable for
illustrating enduring relations between the local and the medial, between
text and talk, and between journalism and gossip. The concept news legend is
introduced, to pinpoint the narrative contagion and passing-down that take
place among journalists and other news providers, in cooperation with the
news audiences.

Mia-Marie Hammarlin

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Living with scandal, rumour, and gossip

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Mia-Marie Hammarlin

This book illuminates the personal experience of being at the centre of a media
scandal. The existential level of that experience is highlighted by means of the
application of ethnological and phenomenological perspectives to extensive
empirical material drawn from a Swedish context. The questions raised and
answered in this book include the following: How does the experience of being
the protagonist in a media scandal affect a person’s everyday life? What happens
to routines, trust, and self-confidence? How does it change the basic settings
of his or her lifeworld?The analysis also contributes new perspectives on
the fusion between interpersonal communication that takes place face to face,
such as gossip and rumours, and traditional news media in the course of a
scandal. A scandal derives its momentum from the audiences, whose engagement in
the moral story determines its dissemination and duration. The nature of that
engagement also affects the protagonist in specific ways. Members of the public
participate through traditional oral communication, one vital aspect of which is
activity in digital, social forums. The author argues that gossip and
rumour must be included in the idea of the media system if we are to be able to
understand the formation and power of a media scandal, a contention which
entails critiques of earlier research. Oral interpersonal communication does not
disappear when new communication possibilities arise. Indeed, it may be
invigorated by them. The term news legend is introduced, to capture the
entanglement between traditional news-media storytelling and oral narrative.

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Only a tiny proportion of the cultural regulatory system to which people must
relate can be communicated through signs in the street or in law
regulations. A considerably greater part of our understanding of the
circumstances and restrictions of the community happens through informal
talk, for instance in the form of gossip. The media scandal as a phenomenon
reveals these often unspoken and emotionally regulated cultural agreements.
It makes the boundaries of cultural life visible, allowing us to examine
those boundaries by talking about them and exploring them emotionally
together. What the book has brought out is the circular character of the
news food chain where gossip, journalism, the exercise of public authority,
and political considerations form an intricate network, without clear
hierarchies or directions for the flows of information. In this sense,
gossip-influenced and gossip-dependent journalism is not by definition bad
or inferior. Undoubtedly, more studies on news journalism need to be
conducted with respect to its oral, informal methods – not least now, in the
midst of the shift of journalism from industrial production to an
emotionally charged networked environment.

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Ian Scott and Henry Thompson

By any standard, Stone has been a product of war; intrigued by it, physically and psychologically marked by it, propelled to action by it, and galvanised in opposition to it. The chapter takes Platoon as its starting point before considering how ideas of war have informed the construction and reception of later films like World Trade Center (2006) and W. (2008) as well as the Untold History (2012) documentary series. Stone’s perspective on war provides a firm footing from which to interpret not just his films or the wider Hollywood machinery, but to think more carefully about the American polity and its constant, historical and reiterating focus on the mantras of ‘just war’ and the ‘war on terror’

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Ian Scott and Henry Thompson

This chapter traces the evolution of Stone’s political consciousness and his articulation of America’s twentieth century outlook by revisiting JFK, the film that placed Stone centre-stage in this assault on establishment doctrine and routine. It then considers how that critique was honed in his subsequent feature films – W. - documentary work and in particular Comandante (2003) and South of the Border (2010). The chapter also revisits the debate about drama as history as well as locating Stone’s documentary work within that genre’s tradition and trends over recent years including the increasing presence of feature film aesthetics and entertainment values.

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Ian Scott and Henry Thompson

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Ian Scott and Henry Thompson

This chapter pursues the argument that both Wall Street: MNS and Savages have rather more to say about money and capitalism as it is practiced than many critics acknowledged. These recent films articulate a particular kind of moral collapse that is different from the moral implosions examined in Wall Street, Talk Radio and Natural Born Killers. While these earlier productions espoused a range of ideological commentaries about individual responsibility and even personal honour, framed within questions about institutional justice and collective action, the more recent films give less emphasis to these concerns and instead foreground a form of retribution that almost revisits the traditional notions of frontier ethos and Darwinian laws of nature.